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Masoumeh Velayati

Visiting Associate Professor in Gender and Development

BA (University of Tehran, Iran), MA (University of Warwick),
PhD (University of York)

Dr Velayati has joined the Sociology Department since November 2017 on sabbatical leave from the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education, where she has worked since 2011 as Assistant Professor in Gender and Development, Head of Department, Deputy Director of joint MSc Programmes with the University of Dundee, the College Director of Academic Quality Assurance, as well as the Coordinator for six customized programmes with Scottish Quality Authority (SQA).

She has a multi-disciplinary educational background in Islamic studies and comparative religions as well as social sciences with particular focus on international development, gender, and Islamic feminism.

Her previous experience includes teaching at the universities of York, Leeds and Lancaster as well as working for eight years at the United Nations Association International Service; an international development organization operating in West Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Her research interests include:

  • Migration: internal, international and transnational;
  • International development: NGOs and international relations;
  • Gender and Development;
  • Feminism, especially Islamic Feminism;
  • Religious and cultural diversity and multiculturalism;
  • Islamic studies;
  • Iran, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Her recent project focused on Muslim women and work, paid and unpaid, in the UK.

Publications

Book

Velayati Masoumeh. 2011. Islam, Gender and Development: Rural-Urban Migration of Women in Iran, Lexington Books.

 Articles and book chapters

(With H. Godazgar), 2016. To what extent the theory of “social cohesion” is applicable to the MENA region? Islamic Perspective (16): 93-111.

2016. Gender and Muslim Families. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies. Edited by Constance L. Shehan. Vol. 2: 933-37. Oxford: Wily.

2015. Muslim Women and work in Scotland, in Routledge International Handbook of Race, Class and Gender. Edited by Shirley Jackson.

2012. The Iranian State’s Religo-Ideological Policies and their impact on Young Migrant women in Tabriz. In Women and Fluid Identities: Some Strategic and Practical Pathways Selected by Women. Edited by H. Afshar. Palgrave Macmillan.

2007. Perceptions contrastées du hijab parmi les ressortissants iraniens résidant au Royaume-Uni. Social Compass 54: 435-451.

2001. El hejab (panoleta islamica) en el Iran actual:una vision de las mujeres respecto a su uso. Economia, sociedad y Territorio Vol. III, num. 10: 337- 353.

 In Print

Formation of ‘religious’ identity among British Muslim women. In Women and Religion. Contemporary and Future Challenges in the Global Era. Edited by: Elisabetta Ruspini, Glenda Tibe Bonifacio and Consuelo Corradi.

 In Progress

Female Architects in Iran: Occupational Challenges and Intrinsic Fulfilments (with Shiva Velayati). To be published in Brill’s Journal of Hawwa.

 Current projects

  • Writing a monograph based on my resent empirical research on Muslim Women in the UK Labour Market;
  • Editing a book on Islamic Feminism, invited by the Frontiers in Sociology.

Dr Masoumeh Velayati

velayati_m_-_photo_for_id_card.jpg

Visiting Associate Professor

Department of Sociology

The University of Warwick

Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

Tel:+44 (0) 2476 523426

Room: E0.24

m.velayati@warwick.ac.uk